Only the war ravaged Iraqi army is surrendering more soldiers these days than the battered Bonanno crime family.  

Gang Land learned this week that yet another “made member” of the Bonanno gang – Joseph  D'Amico – has quit the mob and joined Team America.  

By laying down his arms and joining the other side, D’Amico became the fifth Bonanno wiseguy in the last six months to reverse 40 years of family solidarity and cooperate with the feds. Until last fall when capo Frank Coppa Sr. broke the ice, the Bonannos were the only New York family without a single defector. 

D’Amico is a former New York Post truck driver. He is a cousin of another recent turncoat and onetime Post employee, Richard (Shellackhead) Cantarella, (left) a capo who cooperated after being hit with charges of racketeering and the 1992 murder of Post delivery superintendent Robert Perrino. As Gang Land disclosed earlier this year, Cantarella’s mobster son Paul and family underboss Salvatore Vitale (right) have also broken their Mafia vows of silence. 

“The Bonannos have gone from rock solid to fighting for their lives,” said one law enforcement source.   

D’Amico was a member of Cantarella’s crew, and the nephew of yet another Bonanno mobster who spent many years on the Post payroll, late capo Al (Al

Walker) Embarrato, (right) who died two years ago at age 91, and was something of a mob legend at The Post, and in his own mind.  

“Al Walker’s the smartest guy in the whole Bonanno family, and he’s the toughest fuckin’ guy,” Embarrato was overheard saying on a bug placed at The Post during a labor racketeering probe by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. 

D’Amico grew up in Knickerbocker Village in the shadow of the old New York Post building at 210 South Street and has other wiseguy relatives. He was a friend of Perrino, an ex-cop who doubled as a Bonanno family loanshark, and he met FBI agent Joe Pistone who was playing his undercover role of jewel thief Donnie Brasco in the late 1970s.

In 1977, while hanging around the Holiday Bar on Madison Street, Pistone “met Al Walker, Tony Mirra, and Mirra’s nephew, Joey D’Amico, who went by the name Joe Mook,” Pistone wrote in his best-selling book, “Donnie Brasco.”

Joey, who sources say was “made” that same year at the tender age of  22, had a cameo appearance (left) in the book in an FBI surveillance shot of Mirra and two members of the family’s Sicilian Connection, Cesare Bonventre and Salvatore Catalano.

Sources say D’Amico, 47, has been cooperating for more than a month with Brooklyn federal prosecutors Greg Andres and Mitra Hormozi in their continuing

investigation of Bonanno boss Joseph Massino, 60, (right) and three others, Frank Lino, 65, Robert Lino, 36, and Daniel Mongelli, 36, currently charged with racketeering and murders in 1981 and 1990.  

“I find that hard to believe,” said lawyer Mathew Mari, who represented D’Amico in the mid 1980’s when he and scores of other Bonanno wiseguys, many who met Pistone, were quizzed by a federal grand jury about the 1980 murders of three Bonanno capos.

Eventually, D’Amico pleaded guilty to perjury in 1987, was sentenced to 18 months and served a little over a year, according to court records in the case.

Gang Land has been unable to obtain any details of the quantity and quality of the information provided by D’Amico, but we’ve got our eyes open and ears to ground, as the Bonanno soldier learned last Sept. 26. 

That day, we told how a week earlier, a “good looking, middle-aged man with brown slacks with a razor-sharp crease and a form fitting sweater” had picked up a copy of The New York Sun in search of Gang Land at Gem Spa, (Photo by Cathy Schreiber) a landmark East Village newspaper and egg cream shop.

We never identified him, but D’Amico certainly knew he was the “Bonanno soldier from the Garden State” who had jumped out of a “gleaming black 2003 Acura sedan” to buy a copy of the city’s newest paper and discuss that day’s column with his driver.

After reading about himself, an incredulous D’Amico told several people about the mention and wondered how Gang Land had learned about it. “Was he there? Was he taping me? Everything he said I said, I said,” D’amico told one Gang Land source. “How the fuck did he know.”

FEDERAL PROSECUTORS in Manhattan are looking to inject some new blood into their case against Luchese acting boss Louis (Louie Crossbay) Daidone (right) to convict him and send him away for life – but they’ll likely need a bit of the old to get it done. 

The old, when it comes to Luchese turncoats, is Alphonso (Little Al) D’Arco, 70, the onetime acting boss who began cooperating in 1991 and was thought to have retired last year when he was sentenced to no time in prison via a satellite feed.

D’Arco and Daidone were both inducted into the family on the same day in 1982, and in 1991, D’Arco told the feds that Daidone, 56, was involved in the 1990 murder of soldier Bruno Facciola and the 1989 slaying of associate Thomas (Red) Gilmore. 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Karl Metzner is also looking to use the more recently acquired insight from former acting boss Joseph (Little Joe) Defede – no spring chicken himself at age 69 – who cooperated last year when the family accused him of skimming of family funds to line his own pockets.

Also in Metzner’s arsenal of Luchese turncoats is Frank Gioia Jr., 35, who was inducted into the family in 1991 at age 24. Gioia, who began cooperating in 1995 and has been credited with scores of convictions, has been used by the FBI to instruct agents about the ins and outs of organized crime.

Daidone’s lawyer, Anthony Lombardino, told Gang Land the racketeering and murder charges are a sleepy “Rip Van Winkle” case with old information and no evidence that will expire when the feds finally get it to trial.

Mob Star: The Story of John Gotti

Mob Star: The Story of John Gotti – the book it took yours truly and Gene Mustain 17 years to do – tells the complete saga of John Gotti, from his treacherous rise to his defiant downfall. Although we didn't know it at the time, we began working on "Mob Star" in 1985, when we began covering the Gotti story as news reporters.

The first edition came out in 1988, and we finished this new edition three days before Gotti died in June 2002. We added a postscript, and Alpha Books has distributed it to the nation's bookstores.

With a 40,000-word update, the new edition contains the entire Gotti saga right up to his time in prison and his death from throat cancer.

The 378 page, full-size book uses eight additional chapters, a prologue and an epilogue to complete the story we began telling (better than any other reporters, we might add!) when we covered the Gotti-orchestrated, midtown Manhattan assassination of former Gambino boss Paul Castellano.

For the last and best words on Gotti, this is the book to have. It is specially priced at Amazon.com at $11.87, more than five bucks off the suggested retail price.

    Not Really For Idiots

Whether you're a Gang Land regular or an occasional visitor, you'll enjoy  "The Complete Idiot's Guide to The Mafia," a book I wrote for Alpha Books. It's filled with real stuff about real wiseguys and insight about the ways that mobsters make their money. It's 343 pages of true stories of life and death, honor and betrayal. Get it at your local book store, or at Gang Land's favorite, Amazon.com, where the powers that be have knocked the price down to $13.27, so low I am concerned that the Godfather of online booksellers has forgotten about my end.